


louder, i'll scream back to you from that unknown

by paradoxicalrenegade (citadelofswords)



Category: Dumb Kids Playing Hero (Podcast)
Genre: Coming Out, Discussions of Disordered Eating, Gen, MAJOR SPOILERS FOR EPISODE 53, Non-Linear Narrative, a very brief mention of animal death, discussions of ableism towards people with learning disabilities, i have feeeeeelings about siblings, me: oh yeah ariel is my character all my headcanons are canon now, mentions of parent death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-27
Updated: 2021-02-27
Packaged: 2021-03-15 21:15:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,283
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29690067
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/citadelofswords/pseuds/paradoxicalrenegade
Summary: Mal can't protect Ariel from everything. Logically, he knows that. She also never hesitates to tell him, for most of her early childhood, that she doesn't need his help for anything. And in her teenage years, straight-backed at their parents' funeral, that she doesn't need him to put his whole life on hold for her.The thing is. He's not sure he did such a great job being a good brother to Ariel when he was a teenager, despite all his promises to the contrary. And he knows he doesn't need to make up for that, not really, but he can't help but worry all the same.
Relationships: Ariel & Malachi
Comments: 3
Kudos: 4





	louder, i'll scream back to you from that unknown

**Author's Note:**

> MIND THE WARNINGS, Y'ALL. i wanted to get into a little bit of ariel's childhood as a girl with undiagnosed autism, seeing as i was also a girl with undiagnosed autism (though i didn't have a brother like mal.)
> 
> there's also a touch of nervousness for ariel when she comes out to mal, which she knows is kind of ridiculous bc she KNOWS he's not straight either but it's still scary to come out to people! it's not really a homophobia thing but i know it can be read that way
> 
> i primarily use she pronouns for ariel in this fic because i feel like she hasn't figured out how to talk to mal about gender yet, btw. gender hard
> 
> hard to be an only child trying to write a realistic sibling relationship but here the fuck i am
> 
> title is from welly boots by the amazing devil because it makes me cry every time and i just wanna scream every time i think about how much mal loves ariel

It wasn’t a difficult decision, really. He got a phone call one day (perfunctory but sympathetic, panic lacing through him until the reassurance that _no, no, your sister is alright, but that’s why we’re calling you—_ ) and the next day he was on a plane back, going back to the house that was his to find his teenage sister trying to hold it together when she should never have had to grow up that fast, to take it all out of her hands.

She doesn’t feel— guilty about it, exactly. Mal’s glad for it. He thinks they’re both a little selfishly relieved that it was such an easy decision for him to make. They don’t really talk about it much, anyway.

It’s not ‘til her senior year that it comes up again, because Ariel’s scanning college brochures and he’s helping her make calls and watching her shoulders get tenser and tenser until finally, he sets down the spoon he was using to stir their pasta sauce and says, “Ari, you know you have other options than going to college, right?”

Ariel’s making iced tea, carefully measuring out spoonfuls of sugar, and she pauses. “My counselors all say I’ll be squandering my potential if I don’t go,” she says, using the lofty voice she uses to talk about authority figures.

“They don’t know you, though,” Mal says, rolling his eyes. “They don’t know you read a science encyclopedia cover to cover when you were ten, and that you’d probably study chemical formulas to unwind if they let you slack off in English. That’s not squandering.”

“What do I do if I don’t go to college, though?” Ariel retorts. “I can’t exactly keep you here forever, they won’t keep your place at grad school indefinitely.”

He can tell that she immediately regrets saying it— she doesn’t like to bring up what he gave up to come home and look after her, but he’s not mad. “You can keep kickboxing,” he says, lightly. “It pays pretty good for wins, right? And you’re really good.” He knows she’s good, and he knows how much it pays— this is just giving her agency. “I can cosign a lease with you for a place. Plenty of people do it at eighteen, it won’t be abnormal. And then you can just go to school when you’re ready. Or take night classes, or whatever. We can talk about it.”

Ariel looks at him like she’s going to fight him, and then her shoulders slump a little. “Is it really okay if I don’t go to college right now?” she whispers. “Cause, I want to, someday. But not right now.”

“Oh, squirt,” Mal says, because he knows it’ll make her roll her eyes and she does not disappoint. But he also opens his arms to hug her and she presses up close, sticking her cold nose into his chest. “You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to. If someone tries to tell you otherwise, fuck ‘em.”

“You won’t be disappointed?”

Ugh, he’s gonna have to have a chat with this counselor she’s been seeing. “Never,” he says, firmly. “You’re my kid sister, which means I’m legally obligated to be proud of you whatever decision you make. Also, I don’t _ever_ want you to do anything you think will make you unhappy. Got it?”

She laughs, and punches him in the side. “Got it,” she confirms. “You burned the sauce, by the way.”

Shit. Looks like they’re ordering pizza again.

* * *

The problem is is that Ariel just straight up won’t eat if not reminded multiple times or if food isn’t placed in front of her.

When she’s kickboxing regularly, it’s not a problem, because she works herself up enough to scrounge down anything and not suffer any repercussions. But they shut down the gyms and the league for a worker’s strike when she’s sixteen and Malachi learns just how weird her relationship to food is.

She _likes_ food. She’s got good taste, for an athlete and a garbage disposal. She doesn’t have a bad relationship with her body, she just— forgets. A lot. Like, an alarming amount. And Malachi knows the time will come where he’ll have to leave her, and he can’t leave her to starve because she just forgot to eat.

So he starts trying to teach her. When it becomes abundantly clear that she hates working in their tiny kitchen at the same time as him, he stands away from her and walks her through doing things herself. She likes simple stuff, he learns quick— meal prepping on weekends, and then having leftovers for the week she can make into other things. If the resources are available to her, and she’s not having to put all the work in on days she’s too tired, she’s more likely to eat.

(Eventually he figures out whatever meds she’s on has messed with her appetite, and they both talk to her psych about that one to see what can be done— but at least he doesn’t have to worry she’s accidentally gonna starve herself because she doesn’t have any food to eat.)

* * *

Mal works hard to learn how to drive his parents' car so they don't have to shuttle him between hockey and school and all the other extracurriculars he's doing right now. He's seventeen and so, so proud of himself when he drives away from the road test with the temporary license tucked in his fancy wallet.

Not an hour after he gets home, the school calls to tell him his sister is being sent home for the day. So that's the first trip he makes in the car by himself. Picking up his suspended sister.

Ariel sits outside the principal’s office with a black eye and bruised knuckles and no other outward injuries, so he just sighs and signs her out and resists the urge to pick her up by the scruff of her neck to cart her outside. He’s well beyond being embarrassed about his loud, unsociable baby sister, but he still has some decorum to maintain. Also, all her weight is muscle.

“So, nugget,” he says, grateful she’s in the backseat and therefore can’t reach his arm for a slap. “Wanna tell me why I’m getting a call saying you’re suspended for the next three days?”

Grumbling noises rise from the backseat and he smirks. “Come again? Couldn’t hear you.”

Ariel sighs loudly. “It wasn’t that big a deal. Okay? It wasn’t even a fair fight, there were three of them and one of me.”

“Ariel.” Mal tries to sound stern, and judging by her look utterly fails, but she sighs anyway.

“Look,” she says quietly. “There’s a new kid in our class. She just moved here, and I dunno exactly what it is, I think she might be deaf? She’s got one of those—,” she pokes carefully at one ear. “And there’s these boys in the class, they’re all really mean, and I know Ms. Flores tells us to tell her if something is happening but she was sick today and I heard them saying some awful things about the new girl. And I tried to ask them to stop and they wouldn’t, and then they asked what I thought I’d do about it, ‘cept they used a really _really_ bad word. Um, the one that starts with r?”

Mal’s blood runs cold. People have called Ariel that to him before, and he’s managed to set them straight, but he’s pretty sure no one’s ever called her that to her face.

“I tried, Mal,” she says, sounding a little pleading. “I tried really hard to not kick their butts, just like you said, but they kept going about that girl and I didn’t know what else to do—,”

“Ari,” Mal interrupts. “It’s okay. I get it. Next time, definitely talk to a teacher about it, okay? Even if it’s a substitute. And you definitely need to tell someone if a kid called you the r-word.” He’s quiet for a moment, peeking in the rearview as Ariel looks at her hands and nods. “You have to explain all this to Mom and Dad too.” At this she groans and rolls her eyes. Finally, he can’t resist, and asks, “Did they at least put up a fair fight?”

Ariel peeks at him from under her hair. “Nah, they couldn’t beat me,” she says.

“That’s my girl,” he says, and she grins at him.

(And if he takes her for ice cream before they go home and she has to face the music, well, no one has to know that but them.)

(She also punches him for calling her nugget, but it’s worth it.)

* * *

(She asks him what the r-word means at one point and he hates that he has to explain it, but their parents talked around it a little too much. “It’s a really bad word,” he tries. “Um, people used to use it to refer to people who have a little more trouble with their brains sometimes, and now people use it in a mean way for the same reason.”

“Like you?” Ariel asks, because every single _fucking_ person on the planet knows about his dyslexia, and he nods. She hesitates, and then she adds, “Like me?”

“Oh, sweetheart,” he says, and she makes a face at him but lets him hug her tight. “You listen to me right now. There’s _nothing_ wrong with your brain. You just have a little more trouble with people sometimes. And loud noises. That doesn’t mean anything’s wrong with you.”

Ariel nods very seriously. “I’m not… that bad word,” she says, firmly. “I’m a _tiger_.” She bares her teeth at him.

“Yes, you are,” he says, ruffling her hair. “My little tiger.”

He tries some other silly nicknames for her over the years, that aren’t the fondly teasing ones, and none of them really stick as well as that one does.)

* * *

They try to call right before dinnertime for Ariel, while he’s in Australia, once every couple of weeks. It’s kind of sporadic, but it’s more helpful for both of them to have a routine, especially to curb the “getting calls from your crying sister at 3 am” anxiety attacks. This time, though, he’s caught by surprise when Ariel calls him first and (with nervousness in her voice) tells him she can’t speak for long.

“Oh?” Mentally, he thinks over the rough sketch of her schedule he keeps in his head, so he doesn’t accidentally call her on days when she’s in training or the library or asleep. “Got big plans tonight?”

“Um, yeah. Kind of.” He can hear her putting steel into her spine. “I have a date tonight?”

Oh, shit. Oh, _shit_! His baby sister has a _date_? What the fuck, he thought he had years yet before she became a heartbreaker! “Oh, yeah?” He’s trying so hard to sound casual and failing miserably. “Going anywhere nice?”

“Not— I mean, I guess it’s kind of nice, but she said there was a little street fair thing she wanted to check out, so I need to make sure I have an okay jacket.”

For a single frightening moment, neither of them say anything. Mal is perfectly, incandescently aware that his sister just came out to him, and he knows how scared she must be of his reaction, even though she knows about his sexuality. He’s never said it to her in so many words, but he’s never hidden it from her either. But Ariel doesn’t talk about feelings. For her to let slip something like that is huge.

He needs to buy her ice cream.

“Planning to offer her your jacket if she gets cold, huh?” he asks, already mentally rearranging his calendar. He’s got time off saved, he can take a long weekend and a hit to his sleep schedule to keep a promise he’d made a decade earlier. “When did my baby sister become such a ladykiller?”

She groans a little, but it’s shaky. “Just because you’re in Australia right now doesn’t mean it’s not still October for me, come on!”

He laughs at her and lets her off the line easily after that, and it’s not that much of a struggle to get the time and the flight booked. (He’ll cherish the look on her face when she opened the door to see him standing there forever.

“I can’t believe you remembered,” she confessed later, after she’d thrown her arms around his neck and hugged him right on her front stoop for everyone to see. “I was ten when you made that promise.”

“This isn’t even for the date, really,” Mal told her. “This is because you are so brave, little tiger, and I am so unbelievably fucking proud of you. And also I’m sad that we won’t be able to talk about boys like I thought we might when I was a teenager.”

“You’re so weird,” Ariel muttered, but she was smiling, and that was a victory.)

* * *

Ariel wins the amateur Muaythai tournament when she’s sixteen, about three months after her birthday, only five after their parents died. She’s crying as they heft the belt, and Mal knows he’s crying too, but he can’t help it. She’s worked so hard her whole life to reach this point, and now she’s got a future in it, if she wants it.

There’s scouts here, from organizations and promotions with acronyms that make his brain trip, but he wraps an arm around her shoulders and tells them all to take it up with her coach, and to leave her alone, before bodily escorting her into the closet that was purposed into her ready room.

In fairness, it’s a spacious closet.

“Thanks,” Ariel murmurs quietly. The adrenaline is fading already, he can tell; and she’s got a split lip and bruised knuckles where she gave it her all. Some of the girls she fought had a foot and some fifty pounds on her.

“I’ve got burgers at home,” Mal says, picking up her hand and prodding it carefully with the tips of his fingers. She winces even as her face lights up with a smile. “Figured they could be either celebratory or consolation food.” He hesitates. “I also baked some bread.”

“Yessssssss,” Ariel whispers, and he grins and brushes her sweaty hair out of her eyes.

“I’m so proud of you, tiger,” he whispers, and she just beams up at him with that smile eerily reminiscent of her youth. Sometimes he watches her fight and worries about her, because she’ll always be that little kid with the heartbroken look in her eyes when she got left behind on the playground— but he’s learned he can’t fight her battles for her a long time ago, and he especially can’t fight these ones.

“Lemme just take care of the blood,” he says, because he can do that. “And wrap your wrist, and then we’ll go home, okay?”

Ariel nods, and allows him to carefully dab at her face, and if she leans a little into his side as he steers her to his car, no one needs to know.

* * *

Mal can't protect Ariel from everything. Logically, he knows that. She also never hesitates to tell him, for most of her early childhood, that she doesn't need his help for anything. And in her teenage years, straight-backed at their parents' funeral, that she doesn't need him to put his whole life on hold for her.

The thing is. He's not sure he did such a great job being a good brother to Ariel when he was a teenager, despite all his promises to the contrary. And he knows he doesn't need to make up for that, not really, but he can't help but worry all the same.

It's mostly assuaged the first time she calls him at 10 in the morning his time just because she misses him and wants him to be home for the holidays, and he tries his best to go home for as many holidays as he can after that, until—

until—

well.

* * *

Now, Malachi is standing second fiddle in his own body, blinded by the pain of having his arm blasted off and numb to the point of— what? He doesn’t even know what he’s feeling. He can’t even really feel the pain because the only thing he knows is what he just heard, top of her voice, coming directly from one of these Andalite bandits.

That was his sister, screaming. That was Ariel, in a panic, calling out telepathically to every single being on this entire alien spaceship.

She’s involved somehow.

She’s _here_.

All of her excited little breakfast infodumps about the existence of alien life and far off planets and how humans could travel to them, and he’s been pulling himself through this nightmare knowing that if it ever ends he’ll be able to tell her everything he’s learned about it, and she’s standing right there.

And he knows that scream, because he’s heard it before— once, so long ago, when she was eight years old and watched the neighbor’s dog get hit by a car, and he held her while she cried. One of two times he ever saw her cry before. He knows, deep inside, that it’s her, even if he can’t see her face.

Which means, soon, so will these Yeerks.

And all too suddenly she’s standing in front of him and he— the Yeerk— it’s him, it’s his body, he’s pointing a gun at his baby sister who’s currently in the body of a tiger and the look in her eyes is bloodlust and conflict and he’s scared that she’s going to think the worst of him and terrified that she’s going to concede defeat and she looks him dead in the eyes and the thought floats into his head— and he knows this one is just meant for him and this Yeerk.

_Do it._

(He’s seven years old, all of a sudden, and his father is handing him the baby he told them he didn’t want. She’s so much smaller than he expected, and squishy, and she’s not crying but she is asleep in his arms. His dad shows him how to support her head and he gets confused— she can’t support her own head? Is she that reliant on everyone? and then she opens her eyes and stares up at him and, listen, Malachi was a child then but even now and back then he would tell you he didn’t believe in love at first sight but this was a very close second. He cried about it. Because what if she got hurt? What if he couldn’t protect her and she got hurt?)

He’s seven years old and twenty-two and twenty-eight all at once and that’s his baby sister in front of him, even if she looks like a tiger right now. Is, a tiger right now. (Aliens are real and they can hurt him.) He promised her when she was born, and again when she was fifteen and he rearranged his entire life to look after her until she graduated, and again three years later when he reluctantly left her alone, that he would do everything in his power to protect her, and keep her safe, and he’s not about to break that promise now.

Malachi played hockey for so long, he knows the muscles he needs. It’ll take everything in him, but he doesn’t need to wrest control of the wrist or the fingers. Just the shoulder. Just the one.

He concentrates as hard as he can on the one action, this one gesture, the most important thing he’s ever done and will ever do— and yanks.

**Author's Note:**

> some fun facts about mal! some of this is in the fic but figured it would be easy to lay it out here also:  
> \- he's seven years older than ariel and has like a good foot on her  
> \- he used to play hockey when he was a teenager into college  
> \- he is, however, a huge softy. ariel had to rescue him from a spider once and he cried when she squished it. (he was twenty at the time.)  
> \- his degree is in international relations and diplomacy which is why he travels so much (he spends most of his time in paris i think)  
> \- he was in grad school when their parents died and he took three years off to be her guardian until she was eighteen  
> \- he was also the one who first cut ariel's hair super short when she was in high school (she has since decided to grow it out)  
> \- he is bi!  
> \- there is a happy modern (ok 2020s is modern shhhh) au where he's a professional hockey player in the nhl and ariel's in school and a long term relationship and her being out and proud helps his best friend feel comfortable coming out to him (they're not the ones who fall in love but it's good solidarity for him ok)
> 
> also did u know in thailand last names weren't a thing until 1913 and now every family is required to have a completely unique last name? i did not know this when i made ariel and now i feel slightly less bad that i never gave her a last name
> 
> y'all know where to find me. i have more reckless shorts i'm probably gonna stick onto dreamwidth at some point in the future but i figure posting shit to ao3 makes it easier for y'all to yell at me. :3
> 
> (also, for the record the science encyclopedia thing is lifted directly from my own life. i did that.)


End file.
